Blogging is dead. Really. You can even read the eulogy here.

Yeah, okay, I’ve never been good at April Fools. (But seriously, check out the blog eulogy – it’s brilliantly written by Copyblogger).

Blogging is in fact very much alive. So alive, that it’s the heartbeat of your internet marketing strategy. If your heart stopped beating you would die. If you stop blogging you will surely kill your opportunity of being found online.

The other day I was having a conversation with two of our writers about this topic. I was giving feedback about a blog post. All of the information was there in the blog, but as I read through it felt boring and stiff. I told the author to loosen up her writing. We talked about other things for awhile, but right before our meeting was over she asked, “How do I loosen up my writing?” Great question. As I thought about my response, I realized there were 3 big things that would help her. Below are a few internet marketing tips to help you loosen up your writing too.

You have an internet marketing strategy in place for one simple reason: you want your ideal customers to find you online. More specifically, you want your customers to find you on Google, because, well, Google has the largest market share – like most of it actually. So when Google releases information about a new update, we want to make sure you know about it, which is what it recently did. We’re here to tell you what you need to know and understand about how it could affect your overall internet marketing strategy.

I love Post-its. They make me happy. Not the yellow boring square Post-its – although they will do – I like the Post-its that come in fun shapes, sizes and colors. Why am I writing to you about Post-its? Because they help me write my internet marketing tips every week and they can help you write too.

To effectively reach the right audience it’s essential to have your buyer personas established and a part of your business's internet marketing strategy. Knowing who your ideal customers are will help you tremendously with your marketing efforts. Many businesses leave this part out or don't realize how important this aspect really is.

In the past three days I have had three conversations with three separate business people who represent three completely different industries. In every case there was a common theme. Why blog? Each of these very bright people who are leaders in their respective buisnesses are convinced that blogging is not right for their industry. They are convinced that nobody they would gain as a client would ever read a blog post so writing blogs would be a huge time suck that would gain them little or nothing.

No really, people make purchases after talking about brands and products on social media. So, if you are a business owner, that’s the answer to your question “Why is social media important?”

As we opened our emails this morning we experienced a first here at Half a Bubble Out – our first negative blog comment. Not just negative – hostile, harsh, rude, ignorant, irrational, ridiculous – are other words that come to mind. It’s ironic actually, because we’ve been discussing blog comments around here a lot lately, asking questions like: Do they matter? Should we care? How should we moderate them? How long should we leave comments open? Do we respond to every comment? But we haven’t yet had the opportunity – yes it’s an exciting opportunity! – to respond to a very negative blog comment until now. So we of course had to share these internet marketing tips with you about how we responded.  

To give some brief context, one of our company owners, Kathryn, wrote a blog post last week about how she disagreed with a commercial for the Cadillac ELR because it essentially proclaims that the achievements and greatness of America rests in the fact that we don’t take time off, and if we do, it diminishes our earning potential. Read the blog and see the commercial here: The Makers of the Cadillac ELR Commercial and I Simply Disagree.

Disclaimer: If you’re new to this internet marketing thing, we really don’t think you’re stupid. It was just too good of a title to pass up! If you’re reading this, it got your attention right?

The Super Bowl has become more than just a game for the majority of Americans. It’s practically a national holiday, an excuse to eat nachos, a reason to don your favorite sports memorabilia and cheer with fellow fans - unless you’re a baseball fan like me. I watch the Super Bowl for the hype and for the commercials.